Monday, March 10, 2008

It Also Doesn't Work

1) Environmentalists are gambling that we can make the huge cuts in CO2 emissions we need simply by improving our energy efficiency and using renewables like solar and wind power.

2) They possess a deep suspicion of big business and big industry that's a residue of the leftism of the original environmental movement.

They don't mention a third reason, which is that carbon sequestration is an expensive, iffy technology that may never work. I've written briefly about some of the challenges faced by Mr. Keith's preferred CCs project here, and many other writers have pointed out the technical issues that make any such project a questionable investment.

However, what I think is most significant are the doubts expressed re carbon sequestration by those within the power generation industry itself.

For example, in his day job, Richard S. Courtney, a well known climate change denier, was once Senior Material Scientist for British Coal. That's actually a PR position, but they gave him a fancy name. Now he edits CoalTrans International (journal of the international coal trading industry. His opinion of carbon sequestration:

When one of Big Coal's premier representatives calls CCs a crock meant to give the industry a thin green sheen, you have to wonder if some of that residue of distrust isn't warranted, and whether Mr. Homer-Dixon and Mr. Keith are not being a little bit naive.

CS is expensive, and its long-term viability is unclear. For it to even dent the rate of increase of our ever-increasing CO2 output, let alone reduce it, would require every new CO2-producing power plant to be placed in a location suitable for CS. As a technological answer, it lacks needed flexibility, even if it works.

This is assuming that CS can even work. It is a lot to ask for geological formations to reliably hold CO2 at bay for the needed timespan.

It doesn't fit in with their agenda, which is to reduce First world fuel consumption to allow freer access by Third world countries, thereby changing the entire economic paradigm.

What economic paradigm? The one that ensures that the majority of people in North America don't get any wealthier and/or happier, despite increased productivity, technological sophistication and net wealth?

"They don't mention a third reason, which is that carbon sequestration is an expensive, iffy technology that may never work."

Who cares if carbon sequestration is expensive? If the technology is ever proven and a price put on carbon emissions, we'll quickly get an idea of how expensive it really is. If it's too expensive, then other technologies will win and expand their market share.

You'd think that since the greenies are also advocating the elimination of factory-produced nitrogen (which uses fuel to create) and thus lowering plant's ability to produce food for the world, that an increase in CO2 (plant food!) and temperature would be considered a welcome offset. Well, that would be, if their agenda didn't include reducing the world's population, so that they can 'save the environment'. For whom, they won't say.